New Year, New Launch, Oh and Winter Solstice – 2018

Welcome to the makeover of the CUSP website and outreach. After twenty years of working this path, Eric and I are throwing our energy more than ever toward getting the word out there to those who want a spiritual path that improves their life every single year.

…provided you do the work.

CUSP is not for people who are given to laziness or passivity. If you wait for the magic to do the work for you, sure, you will get results, but not the life-altering results that come from proactive work.

As above, so below

CUSP uses bio-universal energy: the combination of Divine energy with personal energy toward a specific life goal. That means you have to do your part. Nature is about balance and CUSP is a nature-based spiritual path. We use the eight sabbats to build toward the harvest in fall, so now, in the depth of winter, is the prime time to start your 2018 CUSP process but again,be prepared to do the work.

A path for all

It does not matter what your “religion” is. Religion is a label on a set of beliefs and practices that speak to you on a spiritual level. Those beliefs and practices come from someone else or from inside yourself, but most often, from a blend of the two. They combine what you read and hear and comprehend with what you know and understand on a visceral, soul level. If your religion does not awaken a spark of excitement and reassurance within you, then it is not likely the authentic religion for you. CUSP is not a religion. It is a spiritual path. Christians, Pagans, Jewish people, Native Americans, Eastern Religion practitioners, and people of many other faiths practice CUSP to enrich their lives. You simply layer your own beliefs over the CUSP construct.

Spiral of the year

The spiral of the year is a helix of the eight agricultural holidays of old, all geared toward creating a successful harvest: Winter Solstice, Imbolc, Spring Equinox, Beltane, Summer Solstice, Lammas, Autumn Equinox, and Samhain. The spiral turns ever upward, building on the progress of the previous year. Some goals take years to effectively manifest, but when you plant, it will grow.

Winter Solstice

Your process begins at Winter Solstice, so this is the perfect launch for your year’s manifestation. Even though Winter Solstice has passed, you are still in the Dark of the Year and a distance out from Imbolc on Feb 2, so there is time.

Key points for celebrating Winter Solstice using the CUSP tradition are as follows:

Welcome the spark of light – at Winter Solstice, we have the darkest and longest night of the year. After that, the days become incrementally longer. This return of the Sun (reflected in celebration of the birth of the Son in Christianity) is the spark of light coming back to a dark sky where the nights have grown longer and more commanding since Summer Solstice. We use this spark of light as the spark of inspiration for what we are to plant in the coming year.

Meditate – Take some time to see your life as it is now, objectively and without filters. See the challenges and see the successes. See the joys and see the lacking. See your strengths and see your weaknesses. Do not shrink away from what needs to change and what is missing. Go into it. Feel it. Understand it. Write it down. Imagine the ways you want your life to be different next winter. If money or other people were not considerations, what would you change? Most people trip up here by qualifying their visions with thoughts like, “but I could never afford that” and “my partner would never approve.” This is not about mapping the journey. This is about creating the destination. Think of your goals as planting in a garden. Do not plant more seeds than you can effective attend. We will refine the list later. During this part of our process, we make the list.

Refine – Once you have your list, combine goals when possible. Magic starts with a feeling and if you can get to the feeling behind your desires, often you can manifest even more than if you focus on specific outcomes. For instance, if you list a better paying job, a new car, money to travel, and the ability to pay off three bills, the underlying feeling for those is likely financial security. Financial security allows you to have increased funds to get the new car, pay off bills and likely travel. If you plant “financial security” instead of the job, the car, the traveling, and paying off bills, your attention is more focused and your outcome is the same, plus you get additional benefits you might not have thought to list. Whenever possible, go for what you want to feel rather than specific items you want to get with the harvest. Pro-tip: Remember that you cannot harvest a negative. The Universe hears nouns, not qualifiers. If you say, “I want to lose weight” the Universe hears “WEIGHT…gotcha!” You do not go into a garden and say, “I know! I’ll plant Not Beans.” Plant a positive – what you want to grow in your life, not a negative – what you want to lose. In the case of weight loss, plant “a strong, lean, healthy body” or “a bangin’ sexy frame” or whatever you want to have, not what you want to banish.

Once your list is in place, place it on your altar and add to it or change it until February when we offer it up. Don’t be surprised if some of the things on your list manifest now rather than waiting for the harvest cycle. Thought is magic. Planning is magic. If these things were already underway in the magical flow when you wrote them down, sometimes that is enough of a push to get them into full manifestation before we even plant them. That is one reason we DO take so long to plan and execute this process.

At Winter Solstice, we are not out in the fields plowing, planting, and nurturing. This is the quiet, introspective time of the year. The focus is on the internal, both inside our homes and inside ourselves. This is not a time for action, but for planning and quiet contemplation. For evaluating and objective consideration. There will be plenty of time for aggressive action in the spring. For now, we isolate, contemplate, and rejuvenate.